


So to Stone

by eve11



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Angst, Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-12
Updated: 2011-06-12
Packaged: 2017-10-20 08:53:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eve11/pseuds/eve11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and the TARDIS confront the Time War.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So to Stone

Back when the war was little more than a few bold skirmishes, official decrees, and omnipresent screaming threats, they made a pact with each other. No weapons. No uniforms. No upgrades. If they were to fight, it would be on their terms.

They fled Gallifrey after the War Ministers tried to retro-fit a Class 90 continuum canon to her Type 40 stabilizers, and told him he should cut his hair. They shared a private, impish pleasure in using the offending canon strut circuits to disable the dry-dock lock, before jettisoning them three billion years in the past and choosing their own course to patrol. They flitted together on the seams and angles of the front planes, undermining Dalek fanaticism and bolstering allies with clever tricks.

When the first unraveling engines struck, they were flung screaming through the Vortex, tearing through the histories of three empire moons before they could stabilize enough for a crash landing.

No weapons. No uniforms. They shuddered in agony on the remnants of a newly neverborn colony, his fingers trembling as he checked her casings and shield structures, thought-murmuring _defenses, defenses, defenses_ until the word had no meaning in his mind. He fashioned her a probability shield and they limped to the Satai cluster, bleeding time and likelihood. The Daleks followed, and they fled again. On Lihanwar, he railed against the use of paradox troops, but the Time Lord battalion commanders had no use for a paranoid backwater world, and the Lihan horologic generals wouldn't listen to a disheveled renegade. When the paradox experiment went critical, the Daleks swept in like carrion feeders, using potential bombs to rip the entire planet from the fabric of reality.

No weapons. It took a sleepless year for them to break free of the riptides in the wake of Lihanwar's negative space, and they were the only survivors. The Time Lords made him a Commander at Arms. She cringed at the touch of every War TARDIS under his orders, but the crucible worlds heeded his warnings.

Arcadia fell. Then the War began in earnest.

**Author's Note:**

> "I wept not, so to stone within I grew" -- Dante


End file.
